Saturday, May 19, 2007

Jenny Turner on Muriel Spark

One of Spark's disqualifications from "greatness" is her lack of interest in families - was there ever a "great" novelist who could manage without this mighty social and fictional institution? Did Spark ever write with conviction about even one? When you think about it, you realise it is exactly the way the novels swerve round family, child-bearing, romantic love and so on that lends them their delightful perversity, their very sense of self.

1 comment:

The paragraph you quoted annoyed me greatly, because I so love Muriel Spark, but then I read the whole and could forgive JT in context, especially because she is devoted to Loitering with Intent, which I've read countless times, each time with delight.

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